


Moving Up to Higher Ground

by Capriciously_Terminal



Category: The Fly (1986)
Genre: AKA I watched The Fly and couldn't stop thinking about the rest of Veronica's life, Angst, Emotional Hurt, F/M, Ignoring The Fly 2 (or at least parts of it concerning Veronica), Loving the man in spite of the monster he became, Salvaging the Happiest Ending Possible, The Moments Following a Horror Movie, Veronica Quaife deserves a fighting chance, We're post movie here so Seth's gone but the memory of him is something too heartfelt to ignore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-11 18:49:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15321930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capriciously_Terminal/pseuds/Capriciously_Terminal
Summary: The flood approaches but the world still remains, even after she kills the monster born of (made of) the man she must have loved. So she does what she must.She heads for higher ground and salvages what she can after so much of her life is consumed by tragedy.Wherein Veronica's story does not end, and there is sadness yes but there is so much more left to do.Someone must move in spite of the pain. The love, the loss, and the monster.





	Moving Up to Higher Ground

**Author's Note:**

> That feel when I watched The Fly for the first time and got too fascinated with the idea of Veronica having to continue on after the events of the movie. Someone has to save Stathis Borans despite his being a huge ass. But more importantly, Veronica has to...not save herself but continue on despite of it all.

A second passed. Then two. She watched herself blink, heard her heartbeat in her ears. She was alive, hyper-aware of it, and for a moment it was all frozen. A photo taken a breath after a disaster, before any of it could really sink in. Blood was slick on her palm but drying quickly as it sank into both her skin and the length of the shotgun. As if the blood was binding her and the gun together, her and the weapon that ended it all. The static-filled scent of the pod and its sterilized air burrowed into the soft blue fabric her dress, hanging on despite the filthy spoiled nature of the lab’s air. All of it seemed caught in her hair. Sterile and impossible air mixing with a rot that seemed to surpass the stench of food and bile. Shards of glass littered the floor and seemed to have caught the light of the sparking pods, still holding it close. She felt the floor under her feet, and was shocked that it still carried her. For a moment it all held strong. The end hadn’t come, not yet.

She took a breath. Felt her diaphragm expand and shrink, felt the air flow into her lungs and out her nose. In and out. 

 Two. In and out.

And then suddenly, the pressure released.

The entire world seemed to crash down around her as Veronica dropped the shotgun, as she continued to wail but sound so far away amidst the sparks and the ringing in her ears from the roar of the gun. Her knees hit the floor, but she didn’t feel them give. All she could do was scream as the whole thing was over, but time continued to stretch on around her. As she couldn’t look away from but would do anything not to see what remained of what once had been the man she must have loved.

Because what else could she have felt for him, when she came back to find him rotting and falling to pieces and couldn’t turn away?

When she found herself pressing his form, already thinner and quaking like an animal, as close as she could with a hand buried in his hair? While her heart broke as he whispered pleas for help wearing the shirt she’d bought him herself a few weeks ago. When she went back to him, his body contorting as his mind was eaten alive by an insect’s desires like cancer. As he rambled incomprehensibly and gazed at her framed in moonlight like she was a traveler from a foreign land, something he’d never seen but found too beautiful to look away from. When he told her to go, even though every atom in her body screamed that she couldn’t leave him, and she did because in the end fear for what he was becoming won out against the smallest hope that he could stop the whole process before it got worse. When he told her, a fact of his new world, that if she stayed he’d hurt her and she wept not from fear but sorrow springing from her chest in heavy waves.

When she was thrown into a pod, having torn his jaw from what remained of his face as he dragged her towards molecular deconstruction and reconstruction, she couldn’t stop looking into the deep black orbs that had grown in place of his eyes. She begged him to stop, the sound of it hardly making it past the glass, and found no response. Nothing as he twitched and clicked without looking away from her. He maintained eye contact like an animal, their eyes met and yet it was like he didn’t understand anything she did. She couldn’t stop the panic, unsure if she was even going to die after what he was going to do to her. As she begged him to stop, begged some part of him to still listen and help her, she couldn’t stop thinking about him. Before and after and now. About how it all went wrong regardless of anything she tried. But there wasn’t just the terror, the fear and mayhem and constant stream of her consciousness trying not to die. There was more.

Because despite all of it, the horror and his shedding skin, she still remembered how he took his coffee. She still knew how it felt to have his fingers caught in the curl of her hair. She remembered all of it, even as he broke down to parts that couldn’t be human any longer.

All of the facets of their time together played through her head like her life flashing before her eyes, as she watched what remained of him shamble towards the second pod. She couldn’t stop it all from whirling around inside as she banged a hand futilely against the glass, counting down to the inevitable white light. His haunting face and destroyed mind and how much she wanted him to shrug the pulpy remains of his flesh off like a costume again, to reveal himself alive and whole and safe and take her away from it all. To open the pod, help her out into the air, and let her bury her nose in the crook of his neck because it was all going to be alright.

 She had to have loved him, because she killed him. At his own request, despite the impossibilities of it all spilling from her lips. Even after he’d tried to destroy her, proved himself to be utterly lost in his new cells, she looked at the amalgamation of machine, insect, and man and pulled the trigger. And it broke her heart. She watched it all end and wished she could die too. Wished that the feeling of it all, a pain like her chest has been split open, could end quickly.

But then she dropped the gun, and fell to her knees with the weight of it all. The relief that it was over drowning in the fact that it only could have ended this way, tragedy running chilling fingers across her body. And it’s as that weight threatened to overwhelm her that she remembered Stathis.

Stathis who is an ass, undeniably. Who broke into her apartment more times than she could count and was jealous and never listened to her as an equal: always little foolish Ronnie who needed him back. Who was possessive and rude and never seemed to move past the disgusting parts of him that made her kick him out in the first place. Who sent her petty threats and immediately afterwards proposed their having sex. Who didn’t understand about Seth and cautioned her to leave him but watched her tapes, who took her to the clinic when she asked and answered the hard questions when she couldn’t. Who followed her to what could easily have been called a monster’s lair and tried to fight for her. Who still bled from the mottled remains of his wrist and ankle. Who saved her, disconnecting the pod and killing Seth yes, but saved her with only one hand.

Stathis, who at that moment let out a moan.

 Stathis who is still alive, and hardly moving as he leans against the telepod.

 She remembers Atlas, holding the sky to keep the world from being crushed, and as tears continue to fall down her face she turns away from…from all of it. From the pods and the smoke and what became of Seth and she takes a step up. Kneeling, one leg still pressed into the hard lab floor as a hole grows in her stocking, she imagines moving the world with her.

 Her eyes ache and her chest is heavy and she’d love nothing more than to find the pullout bed in the mess of his things, clear it off, and fall asleep. It would be easy, to let the dark swallow her whole. To wake up in the morning to Seth burning eggs or eating cold Chinese from the container while he lounged in a chair and looked at her like she didn’t have drool hanging from her lip with her hair puffed out and sufficiently ruffled.

 But that isn’t an option, isn’t ever going to be an option again. She will not bow to the monument of her grief, will not buckle. She is not done. Veronica will not allow it to end her, not here. Not when it all isn’t lost. Even if what remains is an asshole who needs to seriously discuss their personal relationship once the night ends.

 So she takes another step and rises to stand on both feet. She wonders if she’ll stay upright, if her legs will just collapse back under her, but she remains steady. She doesn’t falter as she takes a step, as she takes two, as she rushes to Stathis’s side. She cannot stop the gasp that leaves her lips as she takes in the sight of his mangled left wrist, of his right foot lying so close to his ankle but not attached. At the hiss of the enzymes, of the acid, and his screams flicker in her mind as clearly as if she’d recorded them.

For a moment she feels like she’ll be sick, but nothing comes. She feels empty, the world closing in around her, but she cannot stop moving. She isn’t a doctor, but she’ll do what she can. She finds a dish towel in the thrashed about remains of the kitchen, and attempts to wrap it around his wrist. Takes his hand and has him clamp down on it. She finds the remnants of a sheet, torn, and wraps it as best she can around his leg.

 “Hold on,” She says, as his eyes flicker up to her, his face lined with sweat and going red with the pain of it all as she touches the stump at the end of his arm.

 She says it again as he grits his teeth while she sits him up and gets him standing on his foot, his arm slung around her shoulders. As they begin to hobble, quickly as they can for the door. She keeps muttering as she slams the lab door shut, as they take each agonizingly slow stair. Four flights, each seeming to get worse as she pitches with Stathis’s weight and he can do little more than let out hissed breaths and cries and curses whenever she jostles him or stumbles. Gravity doesn’t help and she has to pull back to keep them both from tumbling down a turn, wrenching herself almost entirely around and dragging a yowling Stathis with her.

 And then, as if she walked back into the past, she remembers following Seth up these stairs that night after the Bartok party. It all seems lifetimes away, griping that his big story better be worth all the stairs as she felt her nice shirt stick to her back and her nice shoes pinched her feet in spite of the stockings. She sees him clear as day looking back at her now, turning over his shoulder in his only outfit with the same red tie and gray jacket, his eyes sparkled with some child-like joy and his lip curled up in a knowing smirk. He’d asked her what walking a few floors up was going to be when her whole world was about to change.

 “Veronica!” Stathis is gritting out her name now, a gasp, as she’s stopped moving. She’s unconsciously paused, looking over her shoulder and back up the stairs where her life used to be, where the heart of it remains in a bloody heap on the floor.

 The tears have gone, leaving her eyes dry and burning each time she blinks, but the ache remains. A numbness reminding her to keep moving. She can’t guess what’ll happen once she stops.

 It’s the creak of the stair that spurs her onward. The feeling of Stathis draped over her side and hanging on with all the strength he can muster, having to stop with her. The details of the present, coated in shadow and smelling of blood finally get her out of the lab, down the last stair with a feeling that she’ll keel over soon. Stathis already has. As she wrestles his body into the passenger seat of his car she watches his face go slack and his eyes slide shut. But he keeps breathing, a fleck of milky enzyme burned into his sweater. Silently, wondering how much blood he’s lost and if she’ll just be driving a corpse, she pats down his pockets to eventually find his keys.

 She starts his car and drives to the nearest hospital, running three lights and gripping the steering wheel so tight her knuckles go white. Stathis is pale and limp in the passenger’s seat. The towel is soaked red and his breathing has become so quiet that she parks in the ambulance lane without even killing the engine and runs for the nearest help desk. She then follows behind the nurses who bring a gurney, and automatically answers the questions.

 “There was a lab accident…acid.” The lie flows from her lips without her thinking, her body running on autopilot to keep her alive. The same as her heart beating, the same as her lungs inflating and collapsing.

 “He’s my…” What? Ex-boyfriend? Boss? Savior? All she has left from this whole thing, and she’ll be damned before she loses him too?

 “He’s my editor.”

 She watches them wheel him away, Seth’s dishtowel still clasped around his wrist while the sheet trails off the gurney. She answers the rest of the questions. She supplies his name, allergies, medical insurance, blood type and any information they need to help them help him. She even moves the car when they tell her to.

A nurse in magenta scrubs with a scuffed wedding ring and the soft eyes of a mother leading a child back to bed after a nightmare is showing her to a blue plastic-cushioned set of chairs, a place to wait for news and drink watery cups of coffee, when she balks. She can’t stop here. Where she’ll have to sit still and pray for modern medicine to do for Stathis what it failed to do for Seth, to save a lost cause. Where she passed a man with hair dark as Seth’s playing his own waiting game with his eyes intensely trained on a set of doors that she can only guess leads to an operating room. A shrill cry suddenly piercing the air makes the new father shoot to his feet as the nurse tries to take her gently but firmly by the elbow. It’s there that Veronica just _can’t_ , her arms clasped around her own middle, where a baby could be. Or a monster.

The nurse, Carol according to her plastic badge, is turning as Veronica pulls away, soft discipline falling away to concern, and it’s all she can do to rattle off her phone number and say she’ll be back before she’s running as fast as she can away from the nurse and back to the car. She passes where the father sat, but he’s gone, and the thought of him in a hospital room holding a warm bundle of life while a mother rests in a bed after being pieced back together makes her run faster. Her mind isn’t supplying much dialogue, just a primal sort of fear that’s making her heart race and her logic spin with its utter lack of control. It briefly sounds like something inside her is screaming, and she can only hope the sound isn’t leaking out her mouth.

 She wonders if that was how Seth felt as it got worse. A desire to run, to grab hold of anything she could to make enough noise to drive away caring hands and difficult questions. To lash out. A desire to both remind the world that she’s here but also to frighten it away, to leave her in peace. And all she can do is run.

 She collapses back into the driver’s seat and takes a moment, assesses everything, and decides that she can’t shut down in the hospital parking lot. She just can’t. Stathis’s car is all black leather and the thick scent of his cologne. She can’t escape the thought of them necking for the first time, years ago, in the back seat. Him with his necktie undone and her tugging her blouse over her head. Only now there’s a dark red stain, almost indiscernibly marring the leather in the passenger seat, and a scent like sickness choking the condescendingly familiar burn of the cologne. The very air in the car seems tainted, horror following oxygen into her lungs before diving into her core. Into her stomach, her heart.

 There’s a need, old as time, that seeks out comfort even when she knows the world still spins outside. That the doctors will have more questions, that a baboon could still be sitting in Seth’s apartment. That Seth’s body remains back at the apartment, with the pods that are still scientific marvels with the easiest potential to ruin everything.

 Veronica briefly understands why Seth called her those weeks ago, when the terror overwhelmed him and brought her back into his life. When there was nothing for her to do but take him in her arms and try to help hold it all together despite the futility. Reality looms, regret and responsibility hanging over her head, and she’d give anything to have someone to call. Someone to see. Someone to trust in and to cling to and beg for the burden of the future to be lessened. But instead, she’s alone. There’s no-one to call, so with shaking hands Veronica starts the car and begins the crawl out of the parking lot, through the numerous turns to get back onto the road.

 Instinctually, she pulls into the right turn lane, to go _home_. Back to the lab. She’d done it plenty of times when she’d left him the first time, when he’d kicked her out because he was being just another monstrous man. After he had been angry and petulant and screaming, she’d leave work and start the drive to the lab before realizing she was going somewhere she wasn’t wanted. Now, a place she can never go back to. What used to simply remind her of a longing she felt for him hits her like a blast of scalding water, a flare of pain. She tries to throw the car into the left lane, and remains wedged between the two until the light can turn green. Her breath comes out in quick gasps, short and never enough, and she makes the drive back to her apartment with her heart beating in her throat.

 It’s as she’s climbing her own stairs, the soft turning of the tires and the gentle flow of the air conditioning forcing the exhaustion to seep into her bones, that Veronica realizes she has no idea where her keys are. Her car is parked in the lot by the building and her door is locked, but her keys aren’t in her dress pocket. They could be in her coat, abandoned at the clinic; they could be on a roof somewhere, jostled out by all being carried at full sprint across the city skyline by the monster inside Seth’s skin. They might as well not exist at this point. She moves to put Stathis’s keys back in her pocket, fully prepared to press her back against her door and slide down to sit there, as close as normalcy as she can get, for the rest of the night when she notices that a copy of her apartment key jingles next to his car and office keys.

 For once, she’s grateful he still has it.

 She lets herself into her apartment, and it feels like she hasn’t seen it in years. She moves through her living room like a stranger, past the television and the stubs of cigarettes on the coffee table, before she finds herself in her bedroom. She doesn’t even take off her shoes before collapsing onto her bed.

 She considers sleep, but despite the exhaustion that seems to exist on a cellular level, she can't close her eyes yet. It’s like reaching out into empty air as she tries to think, grasping for something to hold onto but there’s nothing for her to consider. Just the scent of her fabric softener, the press of her pillow against her face as she stares at the chipped paint of her bedroom wall and listens to the familiar rattle of her vents. There’s just the contentment in her chest at being back in her apartment, in finding a safe haven after it all. A place untouched by tragedy.

 There are dirty socks in the hamper and she hasn’t changed her sheets in months but there’s solace in the normalcy of it. Nothing has changed here. Her hairbrush rests on the vanity and her dog eared books sit in their places on her shelves. Reminders for interviews are plastered to the mirror and there’s a notebook on her bedside table full of snippets of articles. Everything in its place, a perfection that finally lets her begin to sink away from it all. Moments blurring together, her thoughts falling apart until they’re a lull in the back of her head. And then just as she’s allowing her eyes to close it hits her, softly and all at once.

 Seth had never seen her apartment.

 Seth never would see her apartment.

 And then it’s all coming back. The familiar sight of him, smarmy and strange but too charming for his own good at that party following her, calling after her. Him getting motion sick in her car. The thought of him, a three year old with tufts of dark hair and serious eyes, getting sick on a red tricycle with a bell. Him against the picturesque checkerboard and red upholstery of the burger joint he dragged her to. Him hunched over the computer, the clacking rhythm of whatever input he was working on. Him silhouetted in the screen of her camera, recorded. Him taking her hand in his, warm and solid, his fingers tapping along her knuckles. Him looking up at her, slightly confused but in an awed sort of way on his bed with her leaning over him, just before she kisses him for the first time. The feeling of his lips against her own. His muttering into her lips, always thinking and talking as his mouth tried to keep up with the endless leaps of his intellect. Him, naked and framed in moonlight, his face lax with sleep with the sheets pooling around his hips as he snores softly. His voice laced with content when she woke him up, just before he’d reach out to her without really opening his eyes for another kiss.

 There’s Seth, in glorious detail, in her mind. And for a moment it’s like something inside her is melting under the heat of it, under how suddenly she misses his ticks and murmurs and the way he’d been. She loves him so much it hurts and as that pain laces through her chest she sees it. What they could have had.

 He’s going to change the world with her at his side, writing a book after they go to Florida. They’ll pack into her car, him with one bag and her with a determination to get him more clothes, and then they make the trek. It takes longer than expected with frequent stops at tourist sites and gas stations and simply beautiful places to relieve the way he tenses and tries not to vomit in her car but she won’t mind. She’ll have him talk about how teleportation works in detail, the machinations of the impossible, just for the sake of listening to him talk. Hearing his voice. He’ll reach over to place a hand on her own while she drives and she’ll laugh at him when he tries to be charming.

 They’ll make it to a condo on the water where she’ll push him into the ocean enough times for him to know to pull her in after him. They’ll walk hand in hand, barefoot with sand between their toes, as the sun sets. They’ll go out for burgers and Thai food and Mexican or she’ll try to teach him to cook something other than mediocre steak. She’ll flick pancake batter on his nose or throw spaghetti noodles onto his shirt and she’ll find him drowning in warm light each morning.

 Then they’ll go back to it all but it’ll be better. The baboon will come back from the lab with stunning test results and even then he’ll run a few more tests. He’ll make simple mistakes and find new problems but none he can’t solve. He’ll check and double check and install safety measures. He’ll troubleshoot for weeks and occasionally get caught up in it but she’ll be right there, recording and talking him down from the peaks of his passion. He’ll sterilize the lab, ensure nothing can go wrong. They’ll fumigate, remove any chance of _anything_ unexpected getting in the pods with him. And then, with her watching, he’ll make the jump.

 But just before he’ll take her hand oh so gently, press a kiss to her lips, and tell her that he loves her (which he’ll have said a million times before but now it’s on the cusp of something and she can see it reflecting in his eyes). And then, stark naked as he steps out of the pod safe and whole and utterly delighted, he’ll go to his pocket and pull out a small velvet box with a joke about her hating jewelry and drop to a knee. And she’ll say yes, with him barely having time to slide the ring on her finger before she’s barreling into him laughing while kissing him senseless because _he did it_. It’ll take months but eventually her face will paint the inside of book jacket sleeve, and she’ll put his name right there on the dedication page.

  _For Seth– The world’s greatest nightclub act, changing the world and human life as we know it._

  _For Seth– Cheeseburger._

  _For Seth– I love you._

 He’ll laugh when she hands him a copy, signed, and try to spin her around but not make it too far because he’s still the man who can’t carry her for too long without getting winded.

 And then the world will change. Anywhere will become accessible and he’ll never have to get motion sick again. He’ll win awards and take her to the banquets and kiss her cheek when they announce his name. There will be bliss and ease and they’ll maybe even make it to an old and married status. He’ll always take her hand and always be there, and she’ll do anything to keep him. Through fights and children and old age, she’ll keep him.

 And then everything hurts all the worse as that blissful dream ends, as the memories before that night get fewer and far between until there’s just the sight of him, reaching out with the phone pinned between the shoulder and his ear trying to order Chinese while she’s leaving. Why did she leave? Why didn’t she just tell Stathis to go fuck himself over the phone? Why didn’t she just let him order Chinese and deal with the threat in the morning? What would she be doing now if she had?

 Because then the last of it slams into her like a sledgehammer and she’s left clutching at her pillow sobbing for all of it. For the good, the lost, and the monstrous.

**Author's Note:**

> So many questions left unanswered, so many painful things left for someone to take care of and if we're being honest here Veronica's the only person capable enough in the film left alive to deal with them. Stathis is the worst but he did enough good stuff I guess to warrant not being abandoned in a lab bleeding out from his ex's fly boyfriend dissolving his limbs.
> 
> Next time: The answer to a question Veronica has been asking herself since the entire affair began, and probably won't stop asking for a while. What is she going to do now? Featuring the dawning of a new day.


End file.
